Reply #93: Yes and no....

[tonekat]

This is a constant source of debate between Mrs. Tonekat and myself. I'm overprotective, and a worrier. Our recently departed 18 year old black cat insisted on going outside since his adoption at one year of age. I figure he was living on the streets for awhile, and there was no keeping him inside. In our first house, where we had a pet door in the basement, he had total in/out priviledges. We would be lying in bed late at night, when we would hear the pet door bang. It seemed like nary a nanosecond would pass and he was lying on top of us....as though he materialized through the floor, that's how fast he was.
Jello, our 8 yr old is a master hunter. He has caught over a hundred voles since we moved to this house at the end of 1995, not to mention other members of the food chain. Mostly it's those peaky voles, and he brings them to us as tribute. We tell people we keep them in the freezer for a future "shrew stew".
We have foxes in the neighborhood, and shortly after he came into our lives, we were coming back to our house from our "night watch" patrol, when we spotted him in the headlights, sitting in the neighbors lawn, looking at another animal sitting about two feet away. "Who's buff colored cat is that sitting near him?" I said. "That's not a cat, that's a fox!" was my wife's reply. We stopped, I got out, walked over and picked him up (my cat not the fox) and brought him back to the car.
We are starting to get coyotes in the neighborhood, so I'm keeping a pretty tight leash on him, and no going out at night any more.
The new 6 mo old kitten shows signs of being a hunter, but it will be awhile before she gets a taste of the yard.